By Managing Director, Sam Landman
WhoSay, a Comcast Ventures portfolio company, curates the smartest, most interesting celebrity social media from thousands of famous actors, athletes, chefs, influencers and more, delivering content at the right place and right time to fans. I sat down with CEO Steve Ellis to talk about partnerships, successful content with brands, trends and how WhoSay is helping marketers make better mobile ads.
Sam Landman: In the video, you mention that ads on mobile are terrible. How does WhoSay solve this problem facing marketers today?
Steve Ellis: The size of the screen simply makes it hard to reach people effectively. You have to make a better ad and deliver it to the right people. That takes real storytelling, good ideas, creative talent, effective targeting and optimized distribution. No one needs to stick around for bad ads on a phone. Our campaigns, by any measure you choose, are delivering the highest engagement rates on the internet, (because the content is excellent, influencers cut through noise and because we target the right audiences across all of the major online platforms) — 15% on average vs 1–2% in the standard market.
SL: Can you give us an example of a recent campaign and the impact for the brands?
SE: McDonald’s recently did a campaign to promote their All Day Breakfast campaign with talent such as Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives, John Tucker Must Die), Jared Padalecki (Supernatural, Gilmore Girls) and DeAngelo Williams (Pittsburgh Steelers). WhoSay developed an organic creative storyline that naturally integrated All Day Breakfast by showing how it complements the lives of busy people that can’t always fit breakfast in their mornings. For example, WhoSay captured Jesse Metcalf on set of his upcoming action movie, caught up with Jared Padelecki while he was at home in Austin, Texas, and and followed DeAngelo Williams in Hawaii at the Pro Bowl and in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, showing how he enjoys All Day Breakfast during his busy schedule. The content was well received by fans because it felt organic to their social feeds, gave exclusive access to their favorite celebrities, and presented All Day Breakfast in an authentic and seamless fashion — and with astonishing engagement rates.
SL: What do you think are the biggest issues facing the media industry (established and new) today?
SE: MOBILE and MOBILE and MOBILE. The scaled machinery of digital advertising is set up to deliver desktop display and video and is still in the process of turning around the machinery to optimize for phones. The good news is the targeting capabilities are all there and excellent — even targeting across multiple screens is well on its way — but now its time to focus on performance, and for that you need better ads. The audience at scale is reachable in multiple ways.
How WhoSay Became the Fastest Growing Content Marketing Company in America was originally published in The Forecast on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
© 2024 Comcast Ventures Terms of Service Privacy Policy Do Not Sell My Personal Information.